Two Chosen For M.L.K. Community Service Award

The Boston College Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Committee will sponsor its Eighth Annual Community Service Awards Reception today from 4-6:30 p.m. in Gasson 100.

This year's awards will be presented to Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney and Boston School Committee Chairman Robert Gittens, and to Ruth Grant, who is active in several Roxbury community organizations.

The event's keynote speaker is William Pepper, JD '75, who is representing convicted Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray in his attempts to win a new trial.

Gittens was appointed on Aug. 1 as commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services. He currently serves as a member of the board of directors for the Judge Baker Guidance Center and is an active member of the Ruffin Society and the Paul McLaughlin Center of the Daniel Marr Boys and Girls Club. He also is a deacon at St. Hugh's Catholic Church in Roxbury.

Grant is a board member of the Roxbury Senior Citizens Council, Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative and Office for Black Catholics. A convert to Catholicism, she has researched and written frequently on the relationship between Catholicism and African Americans, and is director of lectors at St. Patrick's Church in Roxbury.